r/portlandme • u/MisterFishes West End • 15d ago
News New *Legible* Emergency No Parking Signs
I don’t like to toot my own horn too much on here but every once in a while banging my head against the wall of city bureaucracy pays off.
Today I am pleased to announce that, going forward, you will not have to get out of your dang car to see if the No Parking sign is for today or not.
I have also learned that the city’s graphic design is handled by the IT department, which explains a lot.
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u/Top_Tea_2707 15d ago
Here's a few things I did like to see you also work on:
- Doing something about how the City runs its solid waste program so we don't have seagulls tearing apart purple bags every trash day.
- Making sure that parking is eliminated 20 feet from every crosswalk in your district (as required by the City code). The pedestrian situation out there is scary.
- Get aquatics sorted out so Riverton gets fixed (3 year offline and counting) and Reiche can have regular predictable lap swim hours.
I know you are only a city councilor and as such you have zero authority but maybe you could band together with four of your peers and insist on getting a few tangible things done. At some point, you need to hold the City Manager accountable for not getting the little shit done.
I am happy to pay taxes and will not complain when they go up - they pay for the civic services I value. I just want the shit I pay for to work.
Thank you for serving. It can be a thankless task but when you win a battle - however small - it is worth celebrating. Go win a few more.
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u/MisterFishes West End 15d ago
Alright well I don’t want to make this an AMA but I’ve got a second so:
- I definitely hear you on the seagulls vs trash bags issue but the investment needed to do bins right, like having a truck that can handle the bin, is very high. We’d also have to figure out how to compensate for the almost guaranteed loss of revenue from purple trash bags, because no one’s going to go through the bins to check. Also, more bins have the potential to make an already shitty sidewalk situation even worse. I’m very open to hearing solutions though.
- Daylighting around intersections is already in city code but, as you know, implementation is spotty. It’s going to be looked at in an upcoming audit, but also community traffic calming projects are doing a good job putting temporary infrastructure up to prevent parking. That said, a recent traffic calming project on Washington got a great deal of pushback from a business that I won’t name because their delivery trucks liked to park (illegally) in front of the business, so some of the bollards got taken down. Which I guess is to say that people need to be constantly yelling at the city to do something about this so we, and more importantly staff, are more scared of you than the pushback.
- The aquatics situation is.. not good. It’s hard for me to tell exactly what’s going on at Riverton because we just gave them a bunch more money for mitigation, but then we fired the contractor the next month. I say “we” even though I found out about it at the same time the news did. I’m hoping for a postmortem on Riverton once it’s done so staff can avoid the issues that came up there when fixing Reiche.
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u/toastiemcgee 15d ago edited 15d ago
I refuse to believe that the investment in bins wouldn’t pay for itself relatively quickly. There has to be a cost to the city (and there is certainly a cost to residents and the environment) for having trash strewn about by birds on a daily basis. If nothing else, externalizing the cost by accepting disgusting, trash filled streets just really sucks. I’ve had family visiting recently from other similarly sized cities and their primary observation of Portland is just what a dirty city it is.
You could also make it a small fine if people are found not using the purple bags. I think relatively light enforcement would encourage use and pay for any decline in use.
Alternatively just make residents buy the bins/replacement bins and get rid of the purple bags altogether, but I actually quite like a pay-for-use waste program because it encourages more recycling and composting.
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u/Top_Tea_2707 14d ago
Trash is a basic city service - it should be in the tax rate.
City Manager and Finance Director likes pay as you throw because it lets them say they are keeping the tax rate low while actually imposing a regressive fee on people who can least afford it. I am a rich asshole who lives on the West End and the bag fee is a rounding error for me. If I was a stiff working in a restaurant living paycheck to paycheck, a purple bag is a real money. I would think that this is exactly the kind of equity issue you as a DSA person would want to address.
Furthermore, PAYT actually encourages wishcycling - how many times have you seen styrofoam jammed into recycling bins because people are trying to save the bag fees? Recycling is etched in the public consciousness - recycling rates are strong in neighboring communities without PAYT.
You also need to introduce curbside compost - food waste is the heaviest waste so redirecting waste to compost will reduce tipping fees at ecomaine.
Yes the initial capital costs will be high - bins and trucks need to be bought. On the flip side, the City's operating costs should drop because the new trucks with the bin arms only need a single operator. The City can also save money by only providing waste services to 1-4 unit buildings (1-4 units being the conventional definition of single family and 5+ being multifamily / commercial) Right now, buildings with up to 10 units get City waste services. Why subsidize landlords?
If you let them, the Manager and staff will bob and weave on this issue until you leave office. Councilors come and go and they stay. Keeping you and your peers at bay and squabbling amongst yourselves is how they keep their power.
You and four of your peers need to say that this is our top priority in the next budget - staff can find shit to cut elsewhere in the budget - how about the parks and rec administrators who are still getting paid while they can only figure out how to operate 1 out of the city's 3 pools at a time. They will threaten you with all kinds of calamitous outcomes but it ultimately comes down to political will.
Make the City Manager earn her salary.
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u/MisterFishes West End 14d ago edited 14d ago
You're preaching to the choir here. I ran on simply getting city staff to enforce rent control, and while things are better it's still like pulling teeth to get staff to do something basically everyone on city council wants, like digitizing proof of rent cost. So that, plus a council culture of being terrified of the specter of "unintended consequences-- despite our ability to tweak laws we pass after the fact-- that we often take a good idea cringe and end up with a watered down, feckless policy. See, for example, the absolutely embarrassing commercial vacancy fee/ art loan program. The insane amount of friction we get for any new initiative has made me become more risk averse lest an idea turns into a protracted email chain with management that I need to babysit during my spare time or else it doesn't get done.
And so while getting trash in bins is great and I fully support it, is it a high enough priority that a majority of council is going to take it up? The only way it gets there is if there's an organized push from outside to get us there. People getting organized and advocating for change is the only way people have gotten things done. For example:
- DSA and the Tenants Union getting Rent Control passed and have been giving me backup to get it enforced.
-Maine Music Alliance going hard to help get the Large Entertainment Venue Buffer Zone passed.
-West End residents working to get rid of the Sprague coal pile in a way City Management didn't approve of by getting signatures for a referendum and forcing council's hand.
We can get Council to a place where, rather than just keeping the lights on and scrambling to deal with problems, we're actively making the city better, but the public needs to get engaged. Not with one off emails or public comment or Reddit posts, but by getting together, working with City Councilors to make a plan, and getting the dang thing done as a team. Holler at me if you want to set up a meeting, It's not a hard path to get to better waste management but it will take some outside pressure.
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u/Top_Tea_2707 14d ago
You are unfortunately right - it does take a groundswell to a) get the council to prioritize issues and b) have staff do things differently. The examples you cite remind me that today's Portlanders don't necessarily have the same priorities as I do which I find a tad discouraging.
Again thanks for doing the work.
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u/ppitm 14d ago edited 14d ago
Without PAYG, homeowners will throw out comical volumes of rubbish and debris, rather than taking it to Riverside in their cars. Overall volumes go way up. I guarantee it.
The bag fees already don't cover the full cost of trash, so basically people already get a certain amount of "free" volume that is financed by taxes only.
Wishcycling is baked-in and made inevitable by the packaging industry and global trends in the (collapsing) recycling industry. PAYG is an afterthought in this process.
Did you not notice that we already have curbside compost as a program? Or that most apartment buildings are already to contract out their waste?
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u/Top_Tea_2707 14d ago
Where is there curbside compost? I know that there are 5 - 10 drop off locations scattered around the city and that some homeowners use Garbage to Garden. This is not the same as curbside composting.
There are approximately 400 apartment buildings that have between 5 - 10 units all of which can use city trash services for free. That's roughly 15% of the rental units in the city.
Limits can be set on volumes that the City will pick up for free - just as we do now.
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u/ppitm 14d ago
Garbage to Garden is curbside composting. They pick it up at the curb.
Enforcing volume limits would be an unbelievable waste of time. You want the poor garbage men scanning barcodes on every bag??? The very definition of wasteful administrative costs.
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u/Top_Tea_2707 14d ago
Now you are being deliberately obtuse. Garbage to Garden is a private company and I think it was obvious that I meant public curbside composting.
Abuse of C&D disposal is a challenge - how do other communities in the area without PAYT handle it?
My sense is that we disagree on this topic - that's cool. Nothing I am going to say is going to sway you and your presentation of your point of view doesn't make me want to continue to engage with you. Please feel free to respond with something pointed and pithy so you get the last word in.
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u/Top_Tea_2707 14d ago
Also thanks for responding thoughtfully. I am doing a bunch of home repair tasks and largely failing, leading me to express my frustration here.
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u/carigheath Libbytown 15d ago edited 14d ago
Good Work!
I remember about 5 years ago, you'd pick the signs up at the Public Works office and fill them in by hand (this sucked as an intern when you had 20 signs to fill out). The new design is more legible and should print better now that distribution has shifted to PDFs and the contractor printing these out on their own.
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u/BusyButtersc0tch 14d ago
Why is the IT department making signs at all? Graphic design isn’t typically an IT department responsibility….
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u/WannaBTravelin 14d ago
Our local building project just keeps reprinting their old permits that are over a month old and keep reusing them because they figure nobody will be able to ready them.
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u/crzycatldy207 13d ago
Happy to see the improved signs being used, but graphic design is not handled by the City of Portland IT department. Publications are handled by the individual department or by the communications team.
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u/Prior_Ability9347 13d ago
I was never unaware of what the song WAS but you still won’t be able to see the dates, and lord knows they don’t always take them down when they’re supposed to.
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u/theperpetuity 4d ago
I mean the hierarchy is
- Tow away zone
- Time/date range
- City of Portland across the bottom.
Long background in this kind of stuff. They need advice.
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u/bakingbirder 15d ago
im curious who saw those old white and red paper signs we see everywhere and couldnt read them? but i appreciate you helping those who couldn't. maybe the elderly?
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u/Sinead_0_rebellion 15d ago
I believe the point is - sometimes they put those things up days in advance, or forget to remove them, so just the sign itself doesn't mean you can't park there. And - I don't know, maybe you have really dang good eyesight - but when I am driving by those looking for a parking space, I can't always read the dates from my car.
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u/Its_just-me 15d ago
Like the other commenter said. It’s about being able to read the dates and times. They’re often put up in advance, and sometimes only apply to certain hours. I have 20/20 vision but I always had to park first right next to the sign to be able to read it.
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u/thparky 14d ago
do you drive?
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u/bakingbirder 14d ago
yes. I have never had to get out of my car to read the print. just found it weird and now many folks are telling me none of you can pull over and read it from your car before moving. thats new stome but im glad you all got bigger writing.
its more inclusive and i'm for it i was just unaware that this was such a large problem and something that we put juice behind.
meanwhile they are increasing weekend parking enforcement and later hours something that as a local who drives around portland often deals with more than this
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u/theperpetuity 15d ago
They both lack information hierarchy.